Choosing a card portal: six questions before you bookmark

Six questions, thirty minutes, and the feeling of getting more than you gave.

Before bookmarking a card portal, ask six questions. One: how many seconds pass between page load and the first playable hand? Two: does solo play demand an account? Three: how many things flash outside the table? Four: do the games run with an ad blocker on? Five: where does the score sit, large or small? Six: does a mid-hand reload lose the round?

Those six questions remove ninety percent of card portals, and what remains tends to be the small, carefully built sites — exactly the kind worth saving. Question six matters more than it looks: on an office network the connection drops, and a site that punishes a flicker by voiding your hand does not respect the player.

Finally, notice how thirty minutes feel. If you know exactly what you played, what the score was, and which game to return to, the portal did its job. If all you remember is an ad sequence, the site took more than it gave, however good the games were. Your bookmarks should be a list of sites that give more than they take.